Octocat, Meet Firebug: The Popular Firefox Developer Tool Is Now on GitHub

What has six legs, eight tentacles and the head of a cat? Firebug on GitHub of course. Yes, it’s true, Firebug, the JavaScript and web development tool that spawned a thousand imitators (well, at least three anyway) is now available on GitHub.

Firebug has long been open source, but has not, until now, been officially available via Git. The move to Git and the new hosting page on GitHub means that interested developers have an easier way to fork the project, tinker with the code and contribute to Firebug.

Firebug developer Jan Odvarko says the move to GitHub has been smooth so far and will offer interested developers “a much better way to collaborate with other coders.”

Indeed GitHub makes it simple to create your own version of Firebug, whether for fixing bugs, contributing new features or developing Firebug extensions. For details on how to get started with Firebug on GitHub, check out Odvarko’s blog post.

Despite its long-standing relationship with Firebug, Mozilla recently began developing its own, built-in developer tools for Firefox. The move to native tools has left some wondering about the future of Firebug, and no doubt the move to GitHub is in part designed to get more developers contributing to the project.